


Strangers

by rbcch



Series: I Will Be the One to Make You Crawl [2]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Angst, Cheating, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Hurt, I am speechless, M/M, Songfic, The amount of time I spent fighting with HTML, Unresolved drama, You know what's really angstworthy?, blind girl problems for you guys, here goes again, why did I not let this go, wtf even
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-01 02:29:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12146694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rbcch/pseuds/rbcch
Summary: Sometimes Violet genuinely thinks he’s broken Pearl Liaison.Sometimes Violet genuinely thinks Pearl Liaison’s broken him.Or, Pearl is a drunk and Violet tries to lose himself in others.





	Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> So I was on the bus, hungover as hell, and my phone was stuck on Halsey’s Strangers and I didn’t have any energy to lift it and change the song and at some point, I think like an hour or so into listening to it on repeat I was like bitch, this song is actually inspiring me on so many levels and then this happened.
> 
> This is Violet's POV on the shit that goes down in I'll break the back of love for you written in a form of a somgfic and this prolly won't make any sense if you haven't read the first part of the series. Despite the fact that the audience wasn’t too excited about I’ll break the back of love for you, I actually really like it and I loved working on it and I felt like I wanted to bring out Violet’s side of the story. This isn’t the most coherent shit I’ve written, but I actually wanted to try a new writing style and this is the result (Also I’m extra dark when I’m hungover).
> 
> TW - implied alcohol abuse, cheating, emotional abuse, slightly violent behaviour. 
> 
> The lyrics are obviously not mine.

_She doesn't kiss me on the mouth anymore ‘cause it's more intimate than she thinks we should get._

Violet doesn't quite catch the moment it changes. It's just, one day Pearl is smashing his lips against Violet’s, biting him, and exploring Violet’s mouth with his tongue, and the next thing Violet knows is that Pearl isn't allowing Violet’s lips to land on his anymore. Neither of them acknowledges it at first, like it’s something they've both silently agreed on, like it's something Pearl just decided for both of them and Violet has to accept without a fight, and maybe that's the case, maybe Violet has no say in this but he’s never been one to swallow shit without chewing, never been good at following the prevalent policies without questioning them. He’s a motherfucking drag queen, after all, and a person with fluid sense of gender, someone who’s been bending the lines of socially acceptable, blurring the borders of masculine and feminine for as long as he can remember. He’s never taken anything for what it was just because someone told him to and he’s not going to start now.

So he grabs Pearl’s jaw when Pearl tries to once again escape his lips, forces Pearl to face him and attempts to press a kiss on Pearl’s lips, but Pearl sinks his nails into Violet’s wrist, hisses like a cat that has been driven into a corner and is now readying itself for a fight, and flips them so that he’s on top of Violet.

“Not on the lips,” he spits out and Violet winces at the harshness of his tone. “You can do whatever you want to me, but never again on the lips.”

His breath smells of alcohol, like it has for such a long time now, and maybe, just maybe, if Violet won’t be able to taste it in his mouth anymore, then they could forget that it lingers in the air between them, equally as heavy and pressing as all the words that they leave unsaid and all the feelings that they don’t deal with.

Violet doesn’t press it, like he rarely presses anything with Pearl. Pearl is the only one he’s afraid to challenge, has always been. He’s terrified that if he challenges too hard, Pearl will walk away, leave him, tell Violet he never wants to see him again. After all, the last time Violet challenged Pearl ended up with Pearl smashing glasses dangerously close to Violet’s head and then kicking him out.

It takes Violet embarrassingly long to realise that Pearl isn’t forbidding kisses on the lips because he’s trying to hide the taste of alcohol from Violet. He’s forbidding them because he doesn’t want to get close to Violet, doesn’t want that intimacy they had anymore, doesn’t want Violet the way he had wanted him before.

Violet fucks three people before the pain in his muscles and exhaustion and disgust are stronger than the stupid sting in his chest and he feels like he can breathe again.

_She doesn’t look me in the eyes anymore, too scared of what she’ll see, somebody holding me._

First it’s the small touches, then it’s the words, then the kisses, and then it’s the eye contact. Pearl loses all of it, not abruptly, not overnight, but painfully slowly and consciously and every single one of Violet’s nightmares becomes the reality he’s living.

Pearl avoids his eyes. Stares at the walls, or into the wine glass when Violet talks to him. Closes his eyes when Violet slides into him. Turns his head when Violet walks past him or lays next to him. Even when Violet stands in front of him, offering Pearl all that little that he’s got left, Pearl’s eyes are fixed on something behind Violet, on something only Pearl seems to be able to see, on something Violet will never know or understand.

It’s almost like Pearl is terrified of something he might see in Violet’s eyes and Violet doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t get why Pearl avoids his glance, misses the way Pearl stared at him before, his eyes deep and calm as an ocean and his gaze full of contemplative longing.

Losing Pearl’s eyes is the most horrible thing Violet can think of, until it gets to the point where he realises he can’t look his own reflection in the eye anymore, and suddenly he doesn’t blame Pearl for looking at the walls instead of him.

Because what he’s doing to Pearl makes him sick to his stomach, makes him hate himself, and the way Pearl reacts to it, with indifference and carelessness, makes his heart ache, and Pearl’s eyes are still an ocean and Violet just wants to walk into the waters but the beach separating him from the soothing waves is quicksand and Violet is drowning, drowning, drowning with every step he tries to take.

_When I wake up all alone._

The worst are the nights when Violet wakes up sweaty and breathless after tossing around for hours in his sleep, his sheets cold and messed up, and the distance between the ends of his bed feels endless and takes him hours to cross.

_And I’m thinking of your skin._

In the very beginning it is easy for Violet to close his eyes and imagine Pearl there, right next to him, whispering about anything and everything. But as the time passes, the memory of Pearl under his fingers fades away and he has to replace it with other bodies. Bodies that don’t mean anything. Bodies that are close enough but still not what he desires. Bodies that he can imagine to be Pearl’s if he closes his eyes and tries hard enough.

_I remember, i remember what you told me._

And as the weight of Pearl disappears, his voice and words are still clear in Violet’s head and he remembers what Pearl sounds like without hints of intoxication or drugs slurring his speech, and he remembers all the promises Pearl’s littered on his bare skin over and over again, until Violet had no other choice than to believe all of them. 

How very young and idealistic and stupid of him.

_Said we’re not lovers, we’re just strangers with the same damn hunger to be touched, to be loved to feel anything at all._

_We're not lovers._

Lover is such a silly word, even much more silly concept. Violet was never too good with words that strive to define things or people. Maybe it’s because he’s never had the luxury of having words to define himself, describe him comprehensively. He’s always been inbetween, falling somewhere in the middle of concepts, never fulfilling any of them completely, never meeting the expectations fully, never clear and neat and easy to fit under one category.

A lover. A partner. A boyfriend.

He guesses Pearl was all of those things for him. Maybe he was all of those things for Pearl, too. He’s never really thought of Pearl through some concept. Pearl has always been more, almost too much, almost impossible to comprehend. Pearl has always meant more than any stupid word ever could. Pearl has always been too complex to limit with definitions.

Violet was always too insistent about not defining Pearl and where did it get them? In a place where the only definition for them is _broken up_.

_We’re just strangers._

Pearl scares the hell out of Violet when he’s drunk and angry. Violet’s not sure what he’s afraid of the most. Maybe the things Pearl could say to him. Maybe the things Pearl could do to then. Maybe the things Pearl could do to himself. Never the things Pearl could do to him. Because no matter what Pearl does to him, it will never hurt like he’s hurt them, like he's hurt Pearl, like he hurts himself with the decisions he keeps making.

“I do not fucking know you anymore, Violet!” Pearl shouts kicking a chair out of his way during one of their fights.

There’s so much Violet wants to say. He wants to say _It’s still me, Pearly, it’s always been me and you know me better than anyone_. He wants to say _There’s nothing in this world we won’t be able to work through_. He wants to say _Please, calm down and let’s talk without shit flying around_.

“That’s what you get for thinking you’ve pinned down Violet Chachki,” he says instead.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Pearl scoffs and pushes past him, shoulder bumping into Violet’s just a little too hard.

_With the same damn hunger to be touched, to be loved, to feel anything at all._

That night Violet loses himself in the arms of another. In the arms of someone who doesn’t know him, either, because there’s no pinning down Violet motherfucking Chachki.

And he can pretend that that bruise on his shoulder came from having rough sex.

_She doesn’t call me on the phone anymore._

Violet likes to think that he’s got Pearl figured out, that he knows things that no one else has been close enough to learn, that he’s seen aspects of Pearl that Pearl has never shown anyone else. He likes to think that he’s been something special in Pearl’s life, that he’s meant something to that beautiful boy, something more than just a fling, a hapless reminder of the best months of Pearl’s life that he holds onto out of pure melancholy and nostalgia.

Violet likes to think that Pearl’s apathy doesn’t bother him, because he knows what’s behind it. He likes to imagine that Pearl’s fuckallish attitude doesn’t get to him, because he knows that’s not how Pearl really feels. He likes to tell himself that Pearl will never pull that shit on him, never treat him like the rest of the world, because he’s not like the rest of the world, that he’s more and what they have is more.

Oh how very good he’s gotten at self-betrayal.

Because apathy and fuckallish attitude and Pearl-esque treatment is exactly what he gets when they break up and if he wasn’t so painfully aware of everything during their relationship, he’d think he had imagined Pearl and his love all along.

Pearl never initiates anything anymore. He never calls Violet, sometimes doesn’t answer when Violet keeps ringing him desperately, unable to recall what time it is in New York, unable to understand if it’s day or night behind the window wherever he himself is. Pearl never reaches for Violet anymore, but at the same time never stops Violet from reaching out for him, never forbids anything Violet desires or does. Perl never tells Violet he wants him to come over but he never tells Violet he doesn’t want him, either, never asks for his spare key back, never fails to make his home seem and feel like it’s Violet’s place as well as his and Violet doesn’t know how to feel about all of it.

_She’s never listening._

Violet tells Pearl that he loves him.

Pearl pretends to be asleep, and it’s almost believable if it wasn’t for the tension in Pearl’s shoulder blades.

Violet lets it slide, then, decides he’ll tell Pearl again later.

He does and this time around Pearl pretends that the noice of New York and wind on his balcony are too loud for him to hear the words.

It becomes their thing of sorts.

Violet confesses. Pearl pretends. Violet confesses. Pearl pretends. Violet confesses. Pearl pretends.

Eventually Violet becomes so accustomed to the silence in response to his confession that he starts to hear paragraphs in it.

And Pearl just keeps pretending.

_She says it’s innocent._

“Why are you drinking yourself senseless again?”

“That’s quite dramatic, don’t you think?”

“What are you trying to escape? What are you proving, and to whom?”

“It’s just some innocent fun. Like you sleeping with a new guy every fucking night, Vi. Don’t read too much into it.”

Violet doesn’t know how to tell Pearl that sex hasn’t been fun for him in months.

_She doesn’t let me have control anymore._

Violet knows exactly what this whole thing looks like to the outside world. It seems like Violet is in control, seems like he’s dragging Pearl with him on his freefall down the stairs to the throne he’d sacrificed everything to climb up to. Violet guesses it’s the way they’ve been painted, portrayed all along — Violet Chachki, a bad-tempered bitch who knows what he wants and isn’t ashamed to take it and Pearl Liaison, a soft-spoken, lazy boy with bedroom eyes and effortless, flazéda take on not only drag but also on life in general.

He wishes it was that simple.

Because Pearl knows how much of a control freak Violet is, how important it is for him to dominate every situation and aspect of his life, yet Pearl keeps stripping him out of any sense of control with every interaction they have, little by little, until Violet’s hands are tied behind his back in a way that isn’t at all enjoyable.

Pearl is the real controller in their life and Violet is one being dragged behind.

Violet is dancing to the beat of invisible drum and Pearl is the drummer.

_I must’ve crossed a line._

Sometimes Violet genuinely thinks he’s broken Pearl Liaison.

It’s the most visible when Pearl thinks Violet isn’t watching, isn’t paying attention. It’s the most clear when Pearl wraps his arms around himself and looks so defeated, so ready to give up. It’s the most petrifying when Pearl stares into nothingness, his gaze empty and dull, and Violet wonders if Pearl’s swimming in his glass or trying to drown in it.

Violet hates himself for dulling the sun thats reflection was playing in the waters of ocean in Pearl’s eyes, but he does not know how to make it better, how to reignite the fire he fell in love with.

_I must’ve lost my mind._

Sometimes Violet genuinely thinks Pearl Liaison’s broken him.

It’s the most visible when he stares at his own reflection and tries not to see it, not to pay any attention to it. It’s the most clear when he lets arms that aren’t Pearl’s clue him together and breaks into million little pieces as soon as they stop holding him together. It’s the most petrifying when he crawls back to Pearl and knows that the only reason he’s allowed to do so is because Pearl lets him, and Violet wonders when will Pearl grow tired of him and stop letting him in.

And they’re both broken and their relationship is broken and all they’ve got left is fucking and fighting, fucking and fighting, fucking and fighting, fucking and fighting, fucking and fighting.

And then there’s nothing left to fight over or for or about, so they’re just fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, and Violet hates how mended it makes him feel.

_When I wake up all alone and I think about your skin._

The worst are the cold mornings when Violet is all alone and isn’t capable of falling asleep because he’s terrified of two things:

1) His dreams because Pearl is present in them with no exception.  
2) Waking up from his dreams because Pearl is absent from his bed with no exception.

That is why he fills his bed and his head and his senses and his awareness with someone, anyone, whoever who happens to be available and willing to hold him through his sweet nightmares.

_I remember, I remember what you told me._

“Why would I need anything this touristy?” A chuckle.

“Because, my dear, that right there is a real tchotchke. Now you can always look at it and remember me, remember that one day I’ll take you to Paris and kiss you on the top of Eiffel Tower until your head spins.” A grin.

“Not if I take you there first and propose to you on the top of it.” A smirk.

_Said that we’re not lovers, we’re just strangers._

It sounds absurd to Violet. Every time Pearl tells him he doesn’t know Violet anymore, it sounds fucking absurd in Violet’s ears.

Pearl is the only one who knows him, the only one who’s ever known him. Pearl knows him when he’s her, Violet Chachki. Pearl knows him when he’s him, Jason Dardo. Pearl knows him when the lines between him, her, them are slurred and blurred and unclear. Pearl knows him when he, Jason, she, Violet, are intertwined and inseparable and all the same. Pearl knows him when she, Jason, he, Violet doesn’t know who he, she, they is. Pearl knows them when they is neither he or she, when they is something completely else. 

_With the same damn hunger._

He needs to know that Pearl knows him.

_To be touched._

He needs to know that Pearl knows his body.

_To be loved._

He needs to know that Pearl knows _him_ , his mind.

_To feel anything at all._

Because if Pearl isn’t sure he knows Violet, Violet isn’t sure he exists.

_We’re not lovers, we’re just strangers._

Violet knows Pearl. Violet knows Pearl when Pearl’s her, Pearl Liaison. Violet knows Pearl when Pearl’s him, Matthew James Lent. Violet knows Pearl when he’s Pearly, a gorgeous creature with a skillfully painted face, a barely cinched waist, and a half-heartedly tucked dick. Violet knows Pearl when he’s Mattie, a breathtakingly beautiful boy with two days worth of stubble and sweatpants that hang low on his hips.

Violet knows Pearl and nothing, absolutely nothing in this whole universe hurts him more than when his Pearly, his Mattie acts like Violet doesn’t know him.

_With the same damn hunger._

He needs to know that what he and Pearl had was real.

_To be touched._

He needs to know that he didn’t imagine Pearl’s body under his fingers while touching someone else instead.

_To be loved._

He needs to know that he didn’t imagine Pearl’s breath on his skin when Pearl whispered _I love you_ into the nape of his neck, between his legs, into his jaw between little kisses.

_To feel anything at all._

Because if what he and Pearl had wasn’t real, he doesn’t know what is.

_I miss the mornings with you laying in my bed._

And every time Violet wakes up next to a new person, next to someone who isn’t Pearl, he feels so many things it overwhelms him. He feels sick. He feels guilty. He feels dirty. He feels used. He feels like shit. He feels like he was given the best thing ever and he wasn’t capable of keeping it, wasn’t capable of anything but breaking it and screwing everything up for both of them.

And every day he swears he’ll get a grip, he’ll stop this bullshit, he’ll learn to be alone, and he’ll get his Pearly back when he’s shown everyone that he deserves it.

And every night he does the whole shit show all over again.

_I miss the memories replaying in my head._

There’s so many it sometimes feels like being drowned, suffocated, and buried alive all at the same time.

_I miss the thought of a forever, you and me._

When he finds the ring, his heart feels as if it stops beating for a good while.

And then it’s beating in his chest like it’s ready to break his ribcage and jump out. And just a second later it’s beating in is throat and he feels like he wants to throw up until he’s vomited it out and it’s beating outside of his fragile petite body, pumping blood somewhere away from his veins so that he won’t be able to hear it rushing in his ears.

He desperately needs to learn if this is something Pearl imagined for them, something that Pearl wanted for them. He needs to learn if there was a possibility of a happy ending for them, if instead of fucking each other up they could have had each other in every way. He needs to learn if Pearl kept the ring because he believed there was still a slim chance of success for them.

Instead he learns that Pearl has finally moved on. He learns that Pearl has given himself to someone else, and of all fucking people that someone else had to be a person Violet knows, a person Violet respects, a person Violet cares for.

Pearl tells Violet to get out.

Violet is too shocked to realise what he’s doing until he’s done it.

_But all you’re missing is my body, oh._

Violet is nothing but a body to Pearl, has never been, never will be. That’s why he becomes a body to everyone else, too. Because you can’t be hurt by something you asked for yourself.

_Said we’re not lovers (we’re not lovers), ‘cause we’re just strangers._

The thing is, they’re not lovers. At least not anymore. They’re just strangers with memories, a shitload of memories that cut sharp and deep, and that’s why Violet has to stay away from Pearl. If he ever wants to give Pearl a chance to move on, a shot at happiness, he has to be a stranger with memories and a lot of distance between them.

_With the same damn hunger to be touched, to be loved, to feel anything at all (anything)._

He makes it through almost six months of memories and distance until his nightmares become too suppressing and he feels like he has to take the risk, has to try and get to the ocean even if it means he’ll get stuck in the quicksand during his attempt to cross it.

_To feel anything at all._

That’s how little control he has over himself.

_To feel anything at all._

That’s how much control Pearl has over him.

_(You lost it.)_

_(You lost it.)_

_(You lost it.)_


End file.
